SOTD: Lancome Cuir de Lancome

Lovely. Just a little... boozy? today. Surprisingly good on a warm day. I'll be wearing it more often.

Review Roundup: Is here.

Image: Wikimedia Commons.

SOTD: Lancome Sikkim (Quick sniff)

I've mentioned the Lancome La Collection, purchased so that I could smell Climat. I also loved Mille et Une Roses. Today was my first sniff of Sikkim.

I can't make up my mind.

According to Perfume Posse, the notes are aldehydes, ylang ylang, bergamot, galbanum, gardenia, thujone, carnation, jasmine, narcissus, orris, rose, amber, castoreum, leather, moss, patchouli and vetiver. Whew.

I loved the top notes - aldehydes and galbanum and a mix of florals. This phase was old-fashioned, yes, but the kind of old-fashioned that qualifies as a compliment. Stylish. Vintage suit. Utterly assured. The stylish aunt, the one that you aspire to be when you get older, and then you realize that you could wear her scent right now. This is the closest that I've come to appreciating the value of aldehydes, rather than just tolerating them for the sake of other notes.

But in a few minutes it shifted and became the bad kind of old fashioned - headache inducing powdery aldehydes. A powdery aldehyde carrying a beautiful note can be a glorious thing; one carrying nothing is just olfactory noise. Sikkim dropped the galbanum and flowers on the floor at this point, and became noise.

I lost track of it at that point. Three or four hours later, I remembered to sniff again, and found that it had quietly improved. The powder is soft and pillowy now, and it's accompanied by something sweet and smooth - the narcissus? The gardenia? That's all dusted with a veil of moss, enough to keep it from being girly-pretty.

So, a lovely beginning, a headache-inducing middle, a quite nice end. I still can't decide.

Review Roundup: Now Smell This and Perfume Posse and Fragrantica and Yesterday's Perfume.

Image: Wikimedia Commons.

SOTD: Lancome Climat (The La Collection version.)

Mals (of Muse in Wooden Shoes) recommended this, and reviewed this, and used the phrase "hit of civet" about this. I had to try it.

I intended to be well behaved and just get a sample. But the re-issue is new enough to be available from the discounters, and discontinued enough to be available for only so long. That's a combination that inclines me to buy it before it's too late.

Plus, it comes with friends! The La Collection set also includes Mille et Une Roses, Sikkim, and Magie. At least, the one that I was looking at does - it appears that sometimes the rose is replaced with Sagamore. Anyway: Green. Civet. Classic. Solid recommendation. Discontinued. Available. Pretty stopper bottles. Extra bonus fragrances. Foregone conclusion: I bought the set.

I wore the rose scent casually one evening, but I reserved Climat for a day off, to give it a proper evaluation.

It's gorgeous. I guess it would be wrong to just leave it at that and go away to sniff my wrist all evening?

Gorgeous. For the first minute or so I was both pleased and concerned that it closely resembled No. 19 parfum - it was a lacquer-smooth merciless green, and I could swear that I was smelling galbanum, though it's not listed in the notes.

But that phase passed. The glassy smoothness melted away, exposing an herbal smoky note that I interpret as incense - also not in the notes. Texture developed - not rough, but like silk velvet, soft as well as smooth. It's warmer and more herbal than No. 19, less goddess, more human. It's also, as I may have mentioned, gorgeous. That's the best that I can do in describing it; perhaps I can tease out more detail next time.

I agree that this is a distinctly ladylike fragrance, but it's the kind of ladylike that I approve of. It's not powerless, and it doesn't play dumb; it's a warm, intelligent woman. A woman who has the talent of being lovely and feminine, but wouldn't sneer at me for my lack of said talent. I imagine that she'd loan me a spare white glove after I inevitably spilled hot chocolate on mine.

In fact, it's another Myrna Loy fragrance. I think that this has become a category for me.

It's gorgeous. I said that, right? Thank you, Mals, for leading me to it.

Review Roundup: Muse in Wooden Shoes and Bois de Jasmin and Perfume Posse and Basenotes and Fragrantica.

Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

SOTD: Lancome Cuir de Lancome

Based on positive recommendations from some of you fine folks, I snagged this - another reissued classic - when it turned up at a bargain price on Amazon. I finally got my chance to wear it today, and I'm going to need more than one wearing to finish wrapping my mind around it. But when did confusion ever stop me from posting?

My first reaction was that it's feminine. Extremely feminine. This is a lady's scent, a lady who puts herself together with care. Problem is, I can't place where the strong feminine vibe comes from. Leather tends to be daring rather than ladylike, and there is plenty of leather, a rather harsh version for the first few hours. It's as if the leather were a jewel mistakenly placed in an elegantly girly-baroque setting of other notes - a setting that was perhaps designed for a killer indolic floral, but one that turned out to suit the substitution beautifully.

My second reaction is that this is a back-of-the-neck scent, which is why I'm going to have to wear it again to feel that I've really tried it even once. I usually test a fragrance for the first time with nose-to-skin sniffing, and that doesn't work for this one. The leather was too harsh, the spices too, well, spicy. It was aggressive, nearly headache-inducing, when experienced up close.

But the whiffs, as I move, are lovely. Soft but rich and, again, feminine. A very pulled-together feminine - this scent wears high heels, owns a string of real pearls, and never sets foot outside the bedroom without doing her hair. But she's not as distant and elegant as Chanel Cuir de Russie - she's just a nice, friendly, pretty woman. In the movies, she's the one that you want the hero to end up with, because you know that she's better for him than that icy society vamp.

The notes list for Cuir de Lancome includes top notes of bergamot, mandarin, and saffron, middle notes of jasmine, ylang-ylang, hawthorn, and patchouli, and base notes of iris, birch, and styrax. I read that list and nod, and agree that it makes sense - I'd expect richness, and bitterness, and a little resinous darkness, from all that, and that's what I get. But I can't actually pick out even one of those notes - and that'll make it all the more fun to wear again.

Review Roundup: Now Smell This and Fragrantica and Basenotes and The Non-Blonde and 1000 Fragrances and Perfume Shrine (old and new) and mossyloomings and MakeupAlley and Bois de Jasmin (brief mention) and Perfume-Smellin' Things (the original) and Perfume Posse and PeredePierre and WAFT and OpenLettersMonthly (scroll down).

(Edited to rewrite the whole post, because I didn't like it the first time. I'm flighty that way.)

Photo of Myrna Loy and William Powell: Wikimedia Commons.
Brooch photo: By mockbird. Wikimedia Commons.